Heavenly Turmoil

A new and unexpected dispute
threatens to rend further the already tattered fabric of American
civility: Is Pluto a planet?

Once again
the battle lines are being drawn between Red and
Blue states, with all the fury of Sunnis and Shiites. And as usual, the
media are weighing in with their entirely predictable liberal bias.

One hopes the matter can be peacefully resolved, despite the deep
prejudices involved. So far, Pluto has retained its planetary status in a vote
by the Planet Definition Committee, but the issue may not be amenable to a
democratic solution.

The Committee has in fact added to the turmoil by electing three new
planets, Ceres, Charon, and Xena (which you may know as 2003 UB313).
Unless reasonable criteria are adopted, we may soon be dealing with literally
hundreds of putative planets.

More than astronomy is at stake. So is its parent science, astrology.
As a Pisces, I find uncertainty about the heavenly bodies deeply unsettling.
When I read my horoscope in the morning, I want to be able to feel that all
relevant data have been consulted. Earlier generations of astrologers, such
as the great John Dee (15271608), had to deal with only a few
planets, stars, the Sun, and the Moon. It was a simpler, happier time.

Superficially, the opposing parties in the controversy seem well
defined. The Plutophiles, including millions of letter-writing
schoolchildren, passionately affirm Plutos planethood. They tend to
be traditionalist and sentimental, and my own first impulse was to cheer
them on.

But the other side, who I suppose must be called Plutophobes, offer
seemingly powerful arguments: Pluto is a tiny object, perhaps made of ice
rather than mineral, only 1/50 the size of the Earth. It is cold and
uninhabited, perhaps uninhabitable (though President Bush may have
something to say about that after he sends a man to Mars). Its orbit is,
allegedly, more elliptical than strictly circular.

But
here is where the issue
of media bias comes in. Nearly all reporting of the issue is framed by a
loaded term: the solar system. Notice that this phrase presupposes
the Copernican theory, the idea that all the planets revolve around the Sun.
This threatens to become the whole premise of the debate. Question this
theory, and youre effectively shut out of the controversy,
disfranchised, outside the mainstream. So much for
pluralism.

The Copernican theory is just that  a theory, not a fact. It has
a strong appeal to those who are too lazy to do the complex calculations
required by the older, commonsense Ptolemaic view. But for generations, the
simplistic Copernican spin has been tirelessly inculcated in our public schools
 to captive audiences of impressionable children  by secular
humanists and other self-hating Earthlings. Parents have had little say in the
matter.

As a result, both sides in the Pluto debate are accepting a dubious
premise. Yet as the eminent mathematician Bertrand Russell long ago
observed, there is no logical necessity to believe that the Earth revolves
around the Sun rather than that the Sun revolves around the Earth. And as
Sherlock Holmes asks pointedly, what practical difference does it make? In a
free society, one should be able to remain aloof from the current debate
without being dismissed as Plutophobic.

We also have to consider a linguistic angle. It must be remembered
that Pluto wasnt even discovered until 1930, when it was named for
the Roman god of the underworld  a forbidding figure. But a few
years later, Walt Disney gave the name to Mickey Mouses dog, who
was, by contrast, the most lovable canine in the history of cinema, with the
possible exception of Lassie (whose name has never been given to a celestial
body). And Lassies popularity owed much to her co-stars, the great
child actors Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor (who in my opinion has been
going downhill ever since). But Im digressing.

It seems indubitable that the emotions in this debate, especially those
of children, are fueled by the positive associations of the name Pluto
among Americans of all ages who are more familiar with Hollywood cartoons
than with classical literature. Again, much of the blame lies with our
educational system. Surely a debate over whether Mercury or Saturn (also
named for Roman deities) are planets would be far less inflammatory.

The sad truth is that neither Ptolemaists nor classical scholars have a
dog in this fight.

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